Tag Archives: Leader of the Commons

News reports suggest that the long-delayed Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster will be accelerated in response to the devastating fire at Notre Dame. Alexandra Meakin and Alexandra Anderson discuss why progress has been slow and the need for action to address the fire risk in Parliament.

Speaking in the House of Commons on Thursday 25 April, the Labour MP Chris Bryant highlighted the Notre Dame fire in order to call attention to the urgent need for the Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster (R&R) to be carried forward as soon as possible. Bryant, a long-running campaigner for rebuilding the Palace of Westminster (and potential candidate for Speaker should a vacancy arise during the current parliament), noted that while the fire in Paris had caused unimaginable destruction, there had been no fatalities. It would, he warned, be very different if such a fire was to take hold in the Palace of Westminster, where 9,000 people work every day and one million people visit each year.

The fire risk in Westminster has been well-known for years. A 2012 report set out the need for the major refurbishment programme in order to address the fire and flooding risk caused by the buildings’ dilapidated infrastructure that is decades past its expected lifespan. Four years later, the Joint Committee on the Palace of Westminster emphasised the growing risk to the building, warning that:

‘there is a substantial and growing risk ofeither a single, catastrophic event, such as a major fire, or a succession of incremental failures in essential systems which would lead to Parliament no longer being able tooccupy the Palace.’

The Committee called for action without further delay, to ‘restore and renew this historic building for the future, and to ensurethat the Palace of Westminster is preserved for future generations’. Continue reading →

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